Surprisingly little has been done to aid farmers in the mechanized stripping of tobacco from stalk. Even today stripping is done by hand without mechanization. A single laborer can strip about 450 stalks per day. Although there are a number of patented tobacco strippers, for the most part these used cutting knives which wiped the leaves from the stalks of the plant. Any guide rollers that were provided were transverse to the axes of the stalks.
Whitley U.S. Pat. No. 3,892,061 discloses an apparatus for stripping tobacco leaves from the stalks comprising flexible fingers that are loose footed and spring-like to engage the plant stalk and strip the leaves therefrom. This apparatus operates on the stalks standing in the field as a part of a self-propelled or towed harvester. The prior art does not disclose a stripping apparatus in which the stripping rolls and feed path are oriented to provide parallel axes so that the stalk of tobacco is passed parallel to the stripping rolls.